GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Nearly six months after suffering a traumatic brain injury, an Archer High School senior and football player is back at school and talking about his experience in what people are calling a miraculous recovery.
OJ Amofa Appiah returned to school on March 26 after the senior linebacker was injured during a football game against Harrison on Nov. 15.
Amofa Appiah told Channel 2′s Eryn Rogers he remembered being dizzy after making a hit during the game.
The next thing he knew, he was waking up in the hospital. His mother, Elizabeth Appiah, said OJ suffered a brain bleed and was in a coma for a week.
Amofa Appiah said he had suffered three concussions before the hit that sent him to the hospital.
“I had to learn how to speak again,” Amofa Appiah said. “I had physical. I had to learn how to do a lot of things again.”
His mother said it’s hard to believe how far he’s come especially with the prognosis she said doctors were giving her.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
“The process - everything is going to take like a year, so that’s what I had in my mind, but for some reason, God was just doing miracles,” Elizabeth Appiah said.
Amofa Appiah said he still has some challenges. He’s blind in his right eye because of the injury, and he will have to have corrective surgery for that. He said he also struggles with his short term memory, so schoolwork can be difficult. And, he will have to retake his senior year.
His mother said on top of everything, the mounting medical bills are making it difficult for the family to stay afloat.
They have set up a GoFundMe campaign set up to help with those expenses.
Amofa Appiah said he plans to get his strength back and still dreams of playing football in college while studying to get an engineering degree.
TRENDING STORIES:
- Chase with stolen car ends in wreck with 3 others in DeKalb County, suspects injured
- Gwinnett County police say suspect confessed he killed the wrong person
- ‘He’s out amongst us’: Convicted killer mistakenly freed from Clayton County Jail
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
©2025 Cox Media Group
